Month: May 2017

I’m self-employed. I need prescriptions and care to manage chronic health conditions and stay healthy and working. My clients are all small businesses. The artists, copy-writers, developers, videographers and more who I work with are all self-employed. If I can’t get affordable, comprehensive insurance like I do through the ACA then I will have to close my business and go back to working for a large company. So many of the people who I work with have said the same thing. The entire vibrant economic community I work in will disappear under the new AHCA bill.

– Katie, Colorado

Want to contribute? Send me a letter at sarah (at) our-words (dot) com with up to 100 words on how the proposed healthcare bill will impact you. Add your name and state, or just your state if you’d prefer to be anonymous, and a picture (or not, your choice). I will post these testimonials as I receive them.

I wrote a bit today about this healthcare issue. I’m really bothered, but I’m limited. I have a busy life. I have kids and health problems and a million things always happening at the same time. However, the one thing that I keep coming back to is how this whole healthcare debate has stripped us of our humanness. We are no longer people in this discussion that directly impacts so many, we are numbers and checks in various columns of projected business outlooks.

This profoundly bothers me.

It’s easier to hurt people you can’t see. It’s easier to strip rights away from people that don’t have faces.

So I’m launching my own brand of online activism. I’m calling it “The Faces of Impact.” It’s simple, and straightforward, and I really only need two things.

Please, for the love of whatever you may or may not worship, spread the word about this. This project will only work if people know about it and participate.

I need people to write me. Here are the guidelines:

What I’m looking for are no more than 100 words from people who will be negatively impacted by this healthcare bill. I want you to write me a short thing saying how this will impact you, why this bothers you, what this will change about your life. What are your worries? Basically, how does this bill impact you?

If you are comfortable with the idea, you can send me a picture of yourself, and I will post it along with your up to 100 words.

I am comfortable with people remaining anonymous, but I do want you to at least list the state you live in, so people get some sort of a geographic idea of how wide spread and national this crisis truly is. If you don’t prefer anonymity, I’ll just use your first name or initial on your post. For example, -S., Georgia or –Sally, Georgia or – Anonymous, Georgia

If you don’t feel like you can keep your story to 100 words, talk to me. I’m totally willing to give you stage space.

(All testimonials are subject to my edit. No racism, sexism, violence, etc. I will ruthlessly weed that stuff out.)

That’s it.

My idea, as it were, is to post these personal, humanizing testimonials as I get them. I will run this project until the Senate votes on this bill. I realize this site says “Discussions of Disabilities in Speculative Fiction” and for the remainder of this grassroots effort, I will change that byline (probably tomorrow), and either delete it completely or put something else there that thematically works with this project.

No, you do not need to be in the speculative fiction genre to participate. This goes beyond fandom and I do not want to limit it.

This impacts EVERYONE and I want EVERYONE to participate. Let’s make this a HUMAN issue. Help me tell your story. Help me turn us from numbers, back into people. We matter. Our lives matter. Period.